ProDave

Well since you will be submitting the plans for the extension soon, then it will cost nothing extra to add the shed to that so for peace of mind that may be your best option?

I would personally just put the shed up. the worst that can happen is you will be asked to submit a retrospective planning application. That house is one where the entire garden is between the building and the highway so it could be argued anywhere needs PP. Having put the shed up, when you submit the plans for the extension, mark the shed on the plans as "existing shed" and by default if the plans for the extension are passed then so is PP for the shed. Personally I would fence the garden, but you might want to leave that until after building the extension.

If you are building a shed that is between a dwelling and the highway it will probably need PP especially as it sounds like it is so close to the road. There are plenty of "back to front" houses like this, i used to live in one. If you took the rules literally I could have put a shed in my front garden next to the path to the front door, because it was not between a building and the road. but to put a shed in the back garden technically needed PP. Like most of the residents i ignored that and just put the shed up.

I have mine on individual 2 port valves but I wish I had know about a 2 position diverter valve. The only 3 port valves I knew about at the time were the mid position ones.

I like the Burbidge Fusion System, now used in our second house. a nice blend between modern and traditional. They also do an alternative with small glass panels instead of the chrome spindles which gives the glass look but as an off the shelf solution rather than having to be custom made,

Is the supply staying in the same place, i.e. in the outside box, or is it moving into the house. If it is staying, the PME earth is usually available without bothering the DNO. Can you post a picture of your supply head and incoming fuse?

If the house really is well insulated have you considered an ASHP and unvented hot water cylinder? Probably similar cost to an oil boiler and tank, no need to accommodate the oil tank, and not subject to the very volatile prices of oil. The Grant combi oil boilers seem okay. They are not really true combi boilers like with gas, because they keep a small store of hot water, I think to counter the slower response of an oil burner firing up.

Yes been building for 5 years now. Not the intended plan as a house sale did not happen when we needed it, so we had to lay off the builder as soon as the shell was up and do a LOT more ourselves with a drip drip feed of funds. A "build as you earn" project. Realistically still another year from completion.

I don't know about regs re cohabitation. But my 2 pence worth. Don't enclose the ASHP in needs plenty of free air flow. And fit a pair of 47kg bottles on an automatic change over not one small bottle that you will curse when it runs out in the middle of cooking and you have to go out and change it manually. Gas is cheaper per kg in the larger bottles.

This is my log burner fitted to our static caravan. It saw us through the winter where we had the "beast from the east"

Hi and welcome. Pictures would be good. Not very far from me, just the other side of the Firth.

Or make a hinged partition so you can "close" it when you want to sit on the balcony, and leave it "open" when not using it so your neighbour can get his view. Over time perhaps leave it closed more than open, you get the idea.

Don't over think it. An ASHP is a source of heat. Think of it as a system boiler. That heat connects to either the heating (presumably UFH) or the hot water tank via a couple of motorised valves. That plumbing is withing the capabilities of any plumber worthy of that title. The electrics can be a little more complicated than a system boiler and are very dependant on what make of ASHP you choose. They are not as standard in that respect as a system boiler. But again any electrician that can read the manual should be able to connect it. A good option which is well regarded is the Mitsubishi Ecodan ASHP which can be bought with a pre plumbed matching unvented hot water cylinder. That is probably the most simple system to install. I run my system without a buffer tank without issue but some swear by them.

Obviously it must be wetter up here, as we have the opposite issue, how to stop the grass growing over the paved surface and needing trimming back.

You still don't HAVE to rewire any circuit in old colours. Red and black could be as little as 15 years old. I still find plenty of 50 year old installations with old colour cable in good condition with no reason to replace it.

Mine are the Ply ones. Jewson have all the samples for all the different finishes and get them to order.

Interesting schedule of BC visits. Last BC visit here was complete wind and watertight shell. I asked when should the next inspection be and he said "completion" How about getting a large touring caravan and moving into that. tell the council and you will get a few months of Band A council tax until they decide the house is sufficiently complete to give it a banding.

If your reason for chasing the walls to replace the cables is just because they are "old red and black" then DON'T. There is nothing in the wiring regs to say you have to replace existing red and black cables and nothing at all to stop you continuing to use them. It should be simple if necessary to extend the cables to relocate the light fittings, just remember of the junction box is going to end up inaccessible to use maintenance free junctions e.g Wago or similar. If you are going to fit smart switches controlled by an app, then please leave the existing switch drop cables and perhaps fit a blank plate so if the next owner does not like smart switches, they can revert to traditional switching,

Thanks. That does mirror my findings that their support was almost non existent and I only "solved" my issues by my own investigation. And I agree the software inside the units has "room for improvement" In my case, my consolation is that I got my unit very cheap indeed so the fact it works, even though it has some issues, makes it okay. But certainly if you paid full price you would expect full support, which seems to be lacking. If we get a heat wave this year and I try the cooling again, I will pay more attention to see how it modulates. At the moment it only feeds UFH and that was not very effective at cooling the whole house (very little UFH upstairs) so while it cooled downstairs a bit it did nothing to cool the upstairs, hence the need for fan coil units if I am to implement that properly.

Hi Mo679 I only tried mine in cooling mode once, last summer in a really hot spell. It was only "rigged up" to test it and not properly engineered. To do it properly I need to source a couple of fan coil units, add some more plumbing and another motorised valve and change some of the control wiring. So I never got to test how well it modulates. Interesting (and good) that your unit is working reliably. I am particularly interested to know if your setup uses the room thermostat input to the heat pump or not, as that is what appeard to be the source of my problems.

What weed killer have you been using? A Glyphosate weed killer e.g. gallup360 should kill those.

You could always be creative and replace the entire roof, with the part level with or behind the principle elevation pitched, and the portion in front of the principle elevation still flat at the original height. At a previous house I had to go to appeal to get a garage in front of the principle elevation.

About £1000 for SSE in the north of Scotland, to connect to an existing cable literally in the verge on the other side of a single track road. the road crossing was done by others so not included. This was a revised price, after other work had been done and I had already opened up the connection pit in the verge and laid a dict with draw string all the way from the connection pit to the meter box, so it had reduced their work to just pull the cable through and make the connection both ends. I then filled in the connection pit.

Just don't mention the loft, you don't even need to tell them you are using attic trusses, that's only building control need to know that. Just show "loft" on the plans with just a loft hatch as access. No, I really don't think the planners care about the volume of a loft space. If you think they do, then show me a planning clause in your local plan that says you cannot build a house that has a loft space that is large enough to convert at some time in the future. WHEN you choose to convert the loft is when the planners will look at it and decide if there is a planning reason why it cannot happen.

Scottish Water, north of Scotland. connection to water main the other side of a single track road and about 3 metres into the field, was about £1000 for the connection including all fees, and another £1000 to make the road crossing (which was also used for other services) No main drainage here so private treatment plant.